Synopsis
Heavy equipment engineer, Xu Dong (Zhang Yu), cheats on his pregnant wife, Meiling (Ma Li). Real estate developer, Ma Qianli (Zhang Zhiyong), is in mortal danger due to a debt. Xu Dong entrusts his pet dog to Ma Qianli who treats it to the loan sharks. Xu Dong visits Ma Qianli for punishment, but Ma Qianli is already in a miserable state. Meanwhile, Meiling rumbles Xu Dong’s affair from a strand of hair on his clothes. Director Geng Jun, winner of Special Jury Award in 2017 Sundance with Free and Easy (2016), retains a unique sense of black humor and the virtue of intense and implicit character description. The same goes for Manchurian Tiger. The north-eastern fields and snow-covered scenery is desolate, and the characters are very real. The fury between them is expressed in a brief and poetic way that feels like a Chinese poem. A tiger once freely strolling around a Manchurian field is now kept in a cage. Will humans ever be able to be free from their own cage of money and greed? (Ellen Y. D. KIM)